Is Kazaa distribution part of the answer? (was: Python and p2p)

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting Cameron Laird (claird at lairds.com):
> 
> I'm not well acculturated; could someone make this more
> explicit for me?  I understand the claim to be that
> 1.  content available through Kazaa includes
>     the texts of books published conventionally
>     on dead trees
> 2.  impoverished programmers habitually read
>     such content.

Point 1 is definitely true. You can get all sorts of scans done from
books via Kazaa.

> Trying, for the moment, to leave aside the morality of
> these practices, I still find the report surprising.  If
> I were in a situation where I found low returns to my
> programming time, I still wouldn't find the described con-
> tent appealing.  VB and C# books are, in my experience, 
> often mediocre or worse, and they particularly don't work
> when read on a screen.  Or, Mr. Alvarez, are you saying
> that the programmers print out what they find on paper?
> Is that truly less expensive than ordering from the
> publisher?  I'm curious about such details.

I'll answer on the part of our friend; I think you're right about the
quality of the VB and C# books, and I am relatively confident that you
can get sufficient toner and paper for less money than you would spend
on a book. Your product will be less desirable, but it will have cost
you $3-5 versus $30-50.

> 
> I summarize:  I think you're advocating that readers ought
> to write more Python books, because 
> 1.  this will encourage Python "uptake" in 
>     relatively poorer countries, and
> 2.  authors make money.
> I judge that both of these propositions apply only in very
> narrow circumstances.

I think our friend is actually advocating that one or more of us chop
the bindings off our books and scan all the pages into a PDF. Once we
have the complete book (though we could probably skip the copyright
and title pages without offending anyone), we share this resource on
the P2P networks.

In private mail to me, to which I tried to reply to but got a bounce,
Mr. Alvarez proposed that someone might like to take some of the free
Python books available, and put them into their P2P upload directory,
so that someone searching for "Python" will find them.

--G.

-- 
Geoff Gerrietts             "Overspecialize and you breed in weakness.
<geoff at gerrietts net>     It's slow death." -- Maj. Motoko Kusanagi
http://www.gerrietts.net                          (Ghost in the Shell)